The journey to goal - the good, the bad and the ugly but I will get there - finally.

Saturday, December 28, 2013

Part One: Tokyo was amazing!!!!

Hello my friends,

I flew back yesterday and can't wait to tell you about my trip. I loved it! I loved it so much I'm going to try to go back in the Spring. Yeah I know crazy.

I'm going to recap the trip for you and share some tips along with some observations on Tokyo and it's people.

Part One

The Departure

Of course I didn't realize until the day I was leaving that I was leaving on the busiest day of the season. Friday December 20th has the most people travelling. The morning news was showing the Westjet counter and it was madness.

Right then and there I decided to leave early. When I got to the airport and to the Air Canada departures there was hardly anyone there so I breezed through. I also breezed through security which was nice.

Now I was flying to Vancouver first and that's where things got interesting. They got more then 10cm of snow which is highly unusual. Sure enough our plane was delayed for 45min. I was lucky as I knew my connecting flight was still a few hours away but some started to panic a little.

Eventually we were off, got to Vancouver and now I had 90 min before that flight took off. It was delayed a bit as well but what can you do about snow.

My reading material and actually based on Japanese history, the book takes a whole lot of liberties with the story but later on I'll tell you about visiting the Temple where the 47 Ronin (masterless Samurai are buried)

Sunset in the air, now I was losing a day on my way there and would land Saturday night.

Love the map function so you could see the flight path.

The 10 plus hours seemed to fly by but I had major problems sleeping, plus there was this adorable little Japanese boy one row behind me who liked to sing most of the way there.

You need to fill out two forms to enter Japan which I did at the beginning of the flight. Finally arrived and this airport just whisks you out the door. First off was immigration where they took my photo and scanned both of index fingers. They put sticker in my passport and took one of the forms, stapling a piece of it into my passport. One thing about Japan is keep your passport with you at all times as at any point a police officer can ask to see your papers. I landed 2hrs later then scheduled so couldn't take the Airport Limousine Bus to my hotel which would have cost 3000 yen (roughly $30 CDN). Instead I took a cab as I was so tired and awake for about 20hrs. It cost me about $248 to get to the hotel, taxis in Tokyo are crazy expensive.

Hoped in the cab and close to the end of the trip the cab driver wasn't sure where the hotel was, I brought my docs and showed him the address (Japanese address) and we found it about 2 min later.

I was in a City Centre Room at the Park Hotel Shiodome. The room was super small by North American standards but you had everything you needed.

Loved the beverage station and there was also a mini fridge with beer, wine, and water.

I could write a whole post on Japanese toilets, I found them to be all different and finding the flush option was always interesting. Sometimes it was on the wall, mounted behind, motion sensored or something else.

Oh yes I tried all the function and loved the heated seat.

The hotel provided anything you could possible need including tooth brushes.

No sad mini soap instead a full bottle of lovely hand soap.

I looked over Ginza and the Shiodome complex

You can't see it well but this was a Christmas light show at the Caretta Shiodome. It was off to bed as it was now about 9:30 pm Tokyo time and I wanted to acclimate as much as I could.